In her fiction, Miss Bowen is first of all an impressionistic writer. Since there are degress of impressionism, she might best be considered a concrete impressionist. Highly selective, she writes a taut, concentrated style which produces clear, well-defined vividness, in opposition to a vague impressionism verging on the dreamlike. Scenes and characters are rendered in few but telling strokes; here, as with other aspects of her work, Miss Bowen's ideal reader is invited to exercise his own imagination and intelligence. She approaches her material not as a camera but as an X-ray, and she produces a print of essences from which the reader must create a realistic image. (p. 23)
Miss Bowen's prose is polished and crafted with the care of poetry. But on occasion, however, cutting across the normally elegant surface, like a variation in poetic meter, are deliberate awkwardnesses compounded of syntactical circumlocutions…. Her prose constantly seeks to reflect … [the] pressure of straining suppressed tensions, desires, and emotions. Much is implied, even if little sometimes is seemingly said. The prose style also relates to the omniscient narrator who writes the fiction. The persona's vision is classical: rational, intelligent, aloof, penetrating, discriminating, and witty; its attitude is humane and benevolent; but it is unsentimental. Its whole approach to life is firm, frank, and wise—what is meant by "mature" at its optimum. Strategically, the mask is most cunningly devised to make effective Miss Bowen's subject—feelings. (p. 24)
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